One aspect of North Korea's nuclear activity is being steadfastly
ignored: you can use nukes to make more nukes.

Take lots of natural uranium - which North Korea has in abundance - and
stack it up in a pile. Place a small nuclear device near it, preferably
underground and let it off. Small is good as it spreads less debris and
makes more neutrons. Underground is good because it catches the bits.
Sound familiar?

Then, send a few expendable citizens in a few days later after the
initial radioactivity has decayed off to recover the irradiated uranium.
This is now loaded with plutonium, which can be separated using simple
chemical techniques rather than all that tedious faffing around with
centrifuges.

This is not a secret technique, and it would surprise the hell out of me
if the Koreans weren't at least testing the concept. If they aren't,
someone is likely to be shot for incompetence, and that's a powerful
motivator. Could it be that - gasp - they're not complete imbeciles as
the US administration would have us believe, and are in fact cunning
bastards?

Vik :v)

As I write, 2,740 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion started according to official figures. The 9/11 Trade Towers attack killed 2,752 people, and despite any link between the perpetrators and Iraq was widely used to justify its invasion. There are still no accurate figures for the number of Iraqis killed, and no exit strategies for the invaders. For some reason, I find this more disturbing than someone letting off a nuke in an abandoned mineshaft.

US Senators are claiming that the misguided US strike in Pakistan is justified by their faulty intelligence which, incidentally, is not going to help the case against Iran where is hard to spot any intelligence whatsoever from any party involved.

The "War on Terror" seems to be morphing into a "War of Terror", enacting the old cliche of the righteous becoming as bad as the ones they seek to eliminate. How else can one describe the bombing without warning of 18 innocent Pakistani villagers by remote control? Expect more irony as the US military death toll approaches 2,752 - the same number of people that died in the 9/11 attack.

Vik :v)

G.W. Bush's actions need to be considered as desperate acts by a man who considers himself and his country above international laws and UN regulation, who regards his view of security as being more important than liberty, who invades other countries with falsified justifications,
practices indefinite imprisonment without justice or Red Cross access, kidnaps foreign nationals, uses chemical weapons, and whose forces are committing acts of violence, torture and intimidation which are only serving to increase the threat of terrorism world-wide.

No excuse is sufficient.

The US Special Operations Command is spending US$300 million on planting pro-American stories in the world's press - something which it has declared illegal to do in its own newspapers, but apparently is OK to do in the rest of the world. The funding is divided into three US$100 million contracts with the Lincon Group, Science Applications International Corp., and SYColeman. The former are currently under investigation regarding the paid articles in the Iraqi press.

This will make it very hard to take any pro-American news seriously.

Ref:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/pentagonrollsoutstealthpr
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-12-13-propaganda-inside-usat_x.htm
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=200512011036117
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-12-14-pentagon-pr_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA

New Zealand is suggesting that it will allow air "marshalls" to fly on planes headed to New Zealand. Now, I don't know about you but I don't much fancy the concept of state-sponsored terrorists being given a ticket to carry firearms into my country.

Since their inception they have killed more than they've saved and their tactics are indistinguishable from those of hijackers - even down to shooting unarmed passengers. Their training is to intimidate and threaten, then shoot those who do not comply.

Familiar tactics? They are either going to kill more innocents, or get themselves killed because Kiwis are certainly not going to put up with such behaviour on their aircraft.

They're not needed and not wanted. Bugger off.

Ms. Condoleezza Rice is asking the world to trust the US on its approach to fighting terrorism. This is rich, considering they are using weasel-words to bend international law to breaking point: It's not
kidnapping, it's "extraordinary rendition"; it's not torture, its "innovative interrogation techniques"; they're not breaking US law, because they do it overseas.

Is this clever wording supposed to increase our sense of their trustworthiness? To make up for the falsehoods of Iraqi WMD, their bogus denials on the use of white phosphorous and napalm, their mass incarcerations without trial? No, it won't wash. It is past time for the braver countries of the world to tell the US bluntly that their trust quota is now in overdraft and further credit will be refused.